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Taylor Force was an American who was stabbed to death in 2016 while visiting Israel. He was a former U.S. Army officer who was part of a Vanderbilt University tour group visiting the country.

On February 16th of this year, Mr. Lamborn [Congressman Doug Lamborn] (for himself and Mr. Zeldin [Representative Lee Zeldin]) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs (H.R. 1164):

On September 28th of last year, Mr. Graham (for himself, Mr. Coats, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Kirk, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Boozman, Mr. Cruz, and Mr. Scott) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations (S. 3414). The Senate Bill and the House Bill are the same. So what is this about?

Since September of 2015, the beginning of the so-called “stabbing intifada,” Palestinian terrorists have murdered more than 50 innocent people and wounded hundreds more.

The media often describes these terrorists as “lone wolves” completely disconnected from Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA). But the fact is that the Palestinian Authority makes generous lifetime payments to every Palestinian imprisoned for killing Israelis. And if the terrorist dies during his attack, his family receives these payments. This financial support for terrorism is actually required under legislation passed by the Palestinian legislature.

Sen. Lindsey Graham re-introduced a critical piece of legislation — The Taylor Force Act. Representatives Lamborn and Zeldin introduced similar legislation in the House of Representatives. This bill requires that we cut all U.S. aid to the PA until it stops funding terrorism.

This bill is named after Taylor Force, a West Point graduate who survived tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan only to be murdered in Israel by a Palestinian terrorist.

The plaintiffs, some of whom have been victims of Palestinian terrorism, “are fearful that the money that is going to the Palestinian Authority eventually winds up in the hands of the terrorist organizations that can be facilitated to carry out attacks against them,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center and one of the lawyers on the case, told The Daily Caller. “So they find themselves in a very weird situation where their tax money is going actually to attacks against them,” she added.

The Obama administration, not surprisingly, has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. It argued that the plaintiffs do not have legal standing to bring the suit – i.e., they did not suffer direct personal injury traceable to the actions alleged to be illegal. The Obama administration also argued that the courts have no business getting involved in foreign policy decisions that are inherently “political questions.” These are nothing more than pretextual arguments to prevent discovery of the truth whether the Obama administration is violating express congressional conditions on the granting of aid to the Palestinian Authority and for the West Bank and Gaza.

American foreign aid has been funding terrorism for a while. It will be interesting to watch the fate of the House and Senate bills that are trying to end this practice.

I understand that there are a lot of women marching in various places around the country to protest something. I think they are protesting the election of Donald Trump as President, but I am not totally sure why.

During a Saturday morning interview on “Fox and Friends,” a member of the New Wave Feminists said her group was removed from the event without warning and never received an explanation from the Women’s March organizers. Instead they found out through media reports.

She said the organizers of the Women’s March, where over 200,000 thousand people are expected participate to send a message of women’s equality to newly inaugurated President Trump, have espoused “a very specific type of diversity, which does not include everyone.”

Evidently pro-life groups have been excluded from the march.

It gets even more interesting when you look to see who organized the march.

Linda Sarsour, one of the organizers behind Saturday’s Women’s March, being held in Washington, D.C., was recently spotted at a large Muslim convention in Chicago posing for pictures with an accused financier for Hamas, the terrorist group.

While there, she posed for a picture with Salah Sarsour, a member of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and former Hamas operative who was jailed in Israel in the 1990s because of his alleged work for the terrorist group.

Why would someone who supports limited rights for women organize a women’s march?

The Daily Caller further reports:

The event is expected to attract 500,000 people and will feature several high-profile progressive speakers. But it has been heavily criticized for excluding pro-life women’s groups. Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group which opposes abortions past 20 weeks, was asked to take part in the event.

Linda Sarsour has close ties to that organization, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism case.

HLF was found to have funneled money to Hamas, which was designated a terrorist group in the 1990s.

The idea that Israel belongs to anyone except the Jews does not hold water historically. The British named the area of Israel Palestine as an insult to the Jewish people who lived there–it had nothing to do with there being a state of Palestine. Such a state never existed.

This is the picture of the land given to Israel in 1920:

The majority of that land that was originally given to Israel was given to Jordan. After the war in 1948, the Armistice Agreements left Jordan in control of the West Bank. In 1950, Jordan annexed the West Bank and gave all residents Jordanian citizenship. Until the 1967 War, the people living in the West Bank were considered Jordanian citizens. As I have noted in previous posts, Walid Shoebat stated, “One day during the 1960s I went to bed a JordanianMuslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.”

So where am I going with this? Pamela Geller posted an article on her website on January 12 about a court case in the Court of Appeal of Versailles France.

The article reports:

…the Court of Appeal of Versailles ruled that West bank settlements and occupation of Judea Samaria by Israel is unequivocally legal under international law, in a suit brought by the Palestinian Authority against Jerusalem’s light rail built by French companies Alstom and Veolia…

Somehow the major media did not report this ruling.

The article includes a detailed analysis of the case and the reasons for the decision. I will try to summarize the highlights here:

In order to rule whether the light rail construction was legal or not, the court had to to seek the texts of international law, to examine international treaties, in order to establish the respective rights of the Palestinians and the Israelis.

And to my knowledge, this is the first time that a non-Israeli court has been led to rule on the status of the West Bank.

…Keep in mind though, that the Court’s findings have no effect in international law. What they do, and it’s of the utmost importance, they are clarify the legal reality.

The Versailles Court of Appeal conclusions are as resounding as the silence in which they were received in the media: Israel has real rights in the territories, its decision to build a light rail in the West Bank or anything else in the area is legal, and the judges have rejected all the arguments presented by the Palestinians.

The article lists the Palestinian arguments:

The PLO denounces the deportation of the Palestinian population, and the destruction of properties in violation of international regulations. Relying on the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the UN resolutions, it considers that the State of Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory and is pursuing illegal Jewish colonization. Thus, construction of the light rail is itself illegal (1).

The PLO adds that the light rail construction has resulted in the destruction of Palestinian buildings and houses, the almost total destruction of Highway 60, which is vital for Palestinians and their goods, and has conducted many illegal dispossessions. Therefore, several clauses from the annexed Regulations to the October 18, 1907 Fourth Hague Convention were violated (2).

Finally, the PLO alleges that Israel violates the provisions relating to the « protection of cultural property » provided for in Article 4 of the Hague Convention of 14 May 1954, Article 27 of the Hague Regulations of 1907, Article 5 of the Hague Convention IX of 1907, and Article 53 of Additional Protocol No. 1 to the Geneva Conventions.

The article explains why these are not valid arguments:

The Court explains that the Palestinian Authority misinterprets the texts and they do not apply to the occupation:

First of all, all the international instruments put forward by the PLO are acts signed between States, and the obligations or prohibitions contained therein are relevant to States. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor the PLO are States, therefore, none of these legal documents apply.

Secondly, said the Court, these texts are binding only on those who signed them, namely the « contracting parties ». But neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority have ever signed these texts.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The 1967 lines were not borders–they were lines drawn in an armistice. Remember also what has happened in the Gaza Strip since Israel gave it up–it has become a launching pad for sending rockets into civilian areas, and all of the income-producing greenhouses were destroyed because they had been owned by Jews. That kind of hatred is not anything the world needs to encourage.

It will be interesting to see what the implications of this court case will be. First of all, will any of the major media report it? Second of all, will this impact any decisions made at the United Nations regarding a ‘two-state solution.’ Again, I would like to note that until the people involved in the ‘two-state solution’ are willing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, the ‘two-state solution’ is not a recipe for peace, but only an excuse for more war.

Breitbart.com posted an article today citing a Times of Israel report stating that Arab leaders support John Kerry’s proposals for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of course they do. The 1967 borders are indefensible. Kerry’s peace plan is the blueprint for the Arab dream of driving the Israelis into the sea.

The article reports:

Saudi Arabia issued a statement Thursday via an official news agency saying that the kingdom “welcomed the proposals” set forth by Kerry and that they were in accordance “with the majority of the resolutions of international legality and most of the elements of the Arab Peace Initiative” adopted by the Arab League in 2002.

Kerry’s proposals represent “an appropriate basis for achieving a final settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the Saudi Press Agency reported, citing an unnamed source in the Saudi Foreign Ministry.

This is amazing. If you remember, the concept is called ‘land for peace.’ Israel gave the ‘Palestinians‘ the Gaza Strip in exchange for peace. The Palestinians promptly destroyed all the greenhouses that could have provided income for them and then used the land as a staging area to fire rockets at Israeli civilians. The Palestinians also used the Gaza Strip to build underground tunnels to move troops through to attack Israeli civilians. The Palestinians got the land, but Israel did not get the peace. Shouldn’t we learn from history?

Israel is being asked to give up the Wailing Wall and part of the Golan Heights. The Wailing Wall is Jewish–it doesn’t in any way belong to the Arabs. The Golan Heights is strategic–it is a great place to lob rockets at innocent Israeli civilians–it was used for that purpose before the 1967 War. The 1967 boundaries were never actually boundaries–they were cease-fire lines drawn until a solution could be worked out. They were indefensible at the time, and they are indefensible now. Forcing Israel to give up more land for an illusive peace will only create more war. It is truly a shame that the Obama Administration chooses not to understand this. I am sure Israel, along with those who sincerely want peace in the Middle East, is looking forward to the Trump Administration.

Michael Oren is Israel‘s Deputy Minister for Diplomacy. On Tuesday he was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt on the subject of U.N. Resolution 2334, the Resolution that declared Israeli ‘settlements’ in parts of Israel illegal. Hugh Hewitt posted a transcript of the interview.

This is a highlight from the interview that explains why Resolution 2334 is neither appropriate or helpful:

HH: I have to begin by asking, you’re such a great historian, will you reset what the dispute over the territory is and why the Western Wall is not occupied territory, as the UN Resolution 2332 declares it to be?

MO: It’s, okay, I’ll try to do it as quickly as possible. In 1947, the UN declared that Palestine, as it was then known, would be partitioned into two states – an Arab state and an Jewish state. Notice, not a Palestinian state, but an Arab state. The Palestinians didn’t quite exist, yet, and at least not on the international radar. And the Arabs went to war to destroy the Jewish state when it was created on May 14, 1948. And the city of Jerusalem was divided. The eastern part of the city was occupied by the Jordanians, the West Bank was occupied by the Jordanians. In June, 1967, the Jordanians attacked Israel again. Israel repulsed the attack, reunited Jerusalem under Israeli rule, and captured the West Bank, or as we call it, Judea and Samaria. It is not occupied by international law, because the West Bank and East Jerusalem was never part of a recognized sovereign country. Nobody in the world, except for Britain and Pakistan, recognized the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. So the entire international law claim is spurious. But when Israel reunited the city and reunited the city, the Western Wall is in the eastern part of the city. The old city is in the eastern part of the city. We certainly can’t consider our homeland for 3,000 years to be occupied territory. You know, tell a member of the Sioux Nation that his tribal lands are occupied and he can’t live on them. That’s what the UN is telling us. They’re telling us more than that, that by living in them, we’re criminals.

HH: Yeah, this audience has heard Steven Pressfield talk about The Lion’s Gate, the book that will bring people to tears. And you’ve talked about it in your histories as well. It just is absurd. So what happened? Why would the United States do this? And what was the United States’ role in Resolution 2332, which was not vetoed in a breach of American policy that is as bad for the country of Israel as it is for the Palestinians and indeed the world?

MO: It’s bad for the world, and it’s bad for the United States, too, Hugh, and I’ll explain why. The American role was to stand back and let Israel take a tremendous hit, a tremendous hit that will expose us to sanctions and boycotts. It will kill the peace process. It will deliver a deadly, deadly blow to the people of the Middle East who look to the UN for salvation and get absolutely none at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are being massacred here. What does the UN do? It beats up on the Middle East’s only democracy. And America’s role, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, was to cook it all up and to do some arm twisting and make it happen? Why? The Obama administration did this, I can recommend another book, I can’t do that because I’m in government, where it explains the Obama’s worldview, a worldview that sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the core conflict of the Middle East, sees the core of that conflict, the settlement and the occupation, as he calls it, and was going to do his utmost to his last day in office to discredit and delegitimize Israel for our position in settling our homeland and reuniting our ancestral capital, Jerusalem.

This resolution essentially states that Jews building houses on their own land is an obstacle to peace. Somehow it overlooks the fact that rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip might be an obstacle to peace. Somehow it overlooks the fact that Hamas and the PLO have never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist–that might be an obstacle to peace.

It is a shame that this resolution was passed. If peace is possible in the Middle East, this resolution will make it more difficult to achieve. It is difficult to make peace with people whose goal is ‘to drive you into the sea,’ which has been the stated goal of the Arab nations surrounding Israel since 1948 when Israel became a nation. It is even more unfortunate that nations who generally support freedom do not support the only free country in the Middle East where Jews and Arabs have equal rights and religious freedom.The Israeli model of equal rights is the only path to peace in the Middle East, and the United Nations just threw a giant obstacle in that path.

“Israel rejects this shameful anti-Israel resolution at the UN and will not abide by its terms. At a time when the Security Council does nothing to stop the slaughter of half a million people in Syria, it disgracefully gangs up on the one true democracy in the Middle East, Israel, and calls the Western Wall “occupied territory.” The Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes. Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”

The article further reports:

The resolution was authored by Egypt, which shelved the draft after the Netanyahu government reached out to the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump, which then pressured Cairo to drop the resolution. Venezuela, Malaysia, Senegal, and New Zealand say that if Egypt doesn’t push forward, they will. The resolution will permanently enshrine as a matter of international law that the Western Wall is “occupied Palestinian territory,” and that Jews building homes in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is illegal. One prominent member of the pro-Israel community in Washington called the resolution “a nuclear bomb.”

The Obama Administration is already briefing friendly press organizations that they’re showing no animus toward the Jewish state in refusing to veto the resolution. Rather, it’s “tough love”: for an Israel that seems not to have the will or vision to take chances for peace.

That’s not how Israel sees it. As a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem told Tablet: “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory. President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the next administration of advancing peace.”

What really concerns me about this resolution is the idea that building homes in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is illegal. This resolution will not bring peace–it will encourage more violence on the part of those who want to see Israel destroyed. For evidence of the success of ‘land for peace’ all you have to do is look at the Gaza Strip, now a launching pad for launching rockets at civilians in Israel.

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

In my opinion they have not lived up to their charter and need to be disbanded. Where is the outcry about the killing of Christians in the Middle East and Africa? Where is the outcry against the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia? Where is the outcry against the killing of homosexuals in Iran? It is truly time for the United Nations to go away.

Meanwhile, I hope the Trump Administration will either undo what has just been done or else simply defund the United Nations.

When something happens once, you can overlook it. When it happens twice, you begin to wonder. There have been some recent events that would cause me to wonder if I lived in Israel. We all know that most of the Middle Eastern countries have at one time or another threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Lately, that has been limited to one or two countries and a few terrorist organizations. Right now one of the real oddities in the Middle East is the alliances in the Middle East that are being formed in light of the possibility of the Iranian treaty being approved. I never thought I would see Israel and Saudi Arabia or Israel and Egypt cooperating, but it is happening.

Now back to wiping Israel off the map. John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article today about a globe being sold in a discount store in the United Kingdom. Palestine is shown on the globe, but Israel is not. Also, last week on Air France, the maps the passengers looked at during the flight showed Cyprus, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza–but no Israel. The Air France maps have been corrected. The company that manufactures the globe is looking into the situation to see if a correction is necessary.

I am reminded of the disappearing people in the picture in the movie “Back to the Future.” If I lived in Israel, I would wonder. I can’t imaging how America would react if someone started selling globes showing Texas as part of Mexico. (I can image how Texas would react, I just can’t imagine how America would react!)

From the time of the Iranian revolution in 1978, the goal of Iran has been to restore the Islamic caliphate that vanished with the end of the Turkish Empire. We need to remember that the caliphate existed about a hundred years ago–it is not ancient history. Therefore, the book that has been published by Iran on how to outsmart the United States and destroy Israel should not come as a surprise to anyone. What should come as a surprise is why would the United States negotiate with a country whose goal is to destroy one of our allies and eventually destroy us.

Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state.

He uses three words. One is “nabudi” which means “annihilation.” The other is “imha” which means “fading out,” and, finally, there is “zaval” meaning “effacement.”

Khamenei claims that his strategy for the destruction of Israel is not based on anti-Semitism, which he describes as a European phenomenon. His position is instead based on “well-established Islamic principles.”

One such principle is that a land that falls under Muslim rule, even briefly, can never again be ceded to non-Muslims. What matters in Islam is ownership of a land’s government, even if the majority of inhabitants are non-Muslims.

Khomeinists are not alone in this belief.

Dozens of maps circulate in the Muslim world showing the extent of Muslim territories lost to the Infidel that must be recovered.

There is a tenet in Islam that says all land controlled by Muslims at any time must be regained to form the caliphate. That tenet has a lot to do with Iran’s desire to have a nuclear bomb.

The article also reminds us that Khamenei plans to eliminate Israel through making life so unpleasant there that the Jews leave and the land goes to the Arabs as a result of demographics.

The article concludes:

Khamenei boasts about the success of his plans to make life impossible for Israelis through terror attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. His latest scheme is to recruit “fighters” in the West Bank to set up Hezbollah-style units.

“We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip,” he boasts.

Khamenei describes Israel as “a cancerous tumor” whose elimination would mean that “the West’s hegemony and threats will be discredited” in the Middle East. In its place, he boasts, “the hegemony of Iran will be promoted.”

Khamenei’s book also deals with the Holocaust which he regards either as “a propaganda ploy” or a disputed claim. “If there was such a thing,” he writes, “we don’t know why it happened and how.”

This is what Iran’s leaders are preaching to their people and their allies in the Middle East. Do we really want to give succor?

In looking at the nuclear agreement with Iran, one has to consider the Islamic principle of taqiyya, loosely explained as “lying for the sake of Islam.” Taqiyya allows Muslims to issue two statements on any one issue–one to Muslims and one to non-Muslims. I have no doubt that what Iran is telling America about the nuclear deal is very different from what is being told to the Iranians. I pray that the Senate has the courage to turn down the nuclear deal with Iran.

Abbas made the announcement in the West Bank on Wednesday, a day after the U.N. Security Council failed to pass a resolution that had aimed to set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of territories sought by the Palestinians.

Abbas had warned that if the resolution failed, he would resume a Palestinian campaign to join international organizations to put pressure on Israel.

Abbas’ decision is expected to trigger a harsh response from Israel.

Israel says all disputes should be resolved through peace talks, and such actions are aimed at bypassing negotiations.

The fact that the originators of these rocket attacks on civilian targets want to charge Israel with war crimes would be laughable except that the International Criminal Court is so anti-Semitic the charges would probably be taken seriously.

As the Palestinians seek to charge Israel with war crimes, we might also remember the tunnels discovered in their recent war with Israel. In July 2014, I reported (rightwinggranny.com) that the Palestinians plan to use the tunnels to hide until schools and kindergartens were occupied. The terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible. This plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

On Saturday, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian-American was killed on Friday in the West Bank as he attempted to throw a firebomb.

The story reports:

According to the military, the boy, 14, was about to throw a firebomb towards Route 60; an IDF unit positioned nearby opened fire after he had lit the firebomb’s fuse, and was preparing to hurl it. Palestinian officials denied these claims.

A relative identified the teen as Orwa Abd al-Wahhab Hammad and said he was born in New Orleans and came to the West Bank at age six. Hammad’s cousin Moath said he was among a group of Palestinians who were throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.

An Israeli army spokesman told Reuters Israeli forces “managed to prevent an attack when they encountered a Palestinian man hurling a molotov cocktail at them on the main road next to Silwad. They opened fire and they confirmed a hit.”

The United States expresses its deepest condolences to the family of a U.S. citizen minor who was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces during clashes in Silwad on October 24. Officials from the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem are in contact with the family and are providing all appropriate consular assistance. We call for a speedy and transparent investigation, and will remain closely engaged with the local authorities, who have the lead on this investigation. We continue to urge all parties to help restore calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of the tragic recent incidents in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

How about telling the Palestinians not to train their children to throw rocks and firebombs at soldiers? This was not a ‘tragic recent incident.’ It is the result of years of indoctrination of hatred toward Israel in the Palestinian educations system.

Below is a picture of some kindergarten children at the graduation in Palestine that I posted in June 2012. Until this sort of training in school stops, there will not be peace between Israel and its so-called Palestinian neighbors.

There is not a lot of good news coming out of the Middle East these days, but there is some. CBN News posted a story today about SodaStream, the company that makes a do-it-yourself-at-home soda machine. The company is located in Mishor Adumim Industrial Park, just outside of Jerusalem, in Israel, in the West Bank. in a building that used to be a munitions factory.

“We employ 500 Palestinians here. Side by side, we have 350 Israeli Arabs and another 300 Israeli Jews. And we get along together. They’re not killing each other! They go to lunch break. We break bread together and we get to know each other,” he said.

SodaStream pays Israeli wages — four times what workers would earn in the Palestinian Authority, where unemployment is 30 percent. And the workers say they’re happy, too.

Yousef Besharat is a Palestinian Arab who works at the factory. He told CBN News his salary helped him to build a home in just a year. He said there’s no discrimination between Jewish and Arab workers at the plant.

The article further reports:

Birnbaum gave CBN’s Ross a tour of the factory. He said he calls the room where they assemble the valves “the United Nations.”

“We have people from all over here. You’ll see Palestinians and Israelis. You’ll see Russian immigrants and Ethiopians, Bedouins, women and men. I love this hall,” Birnbaum said.

He introduced CBN News to the shift manager, whom he called “a wonderful Palestinian fellow who started as an entry level and built himself up here at SodaStream in the last few years to shift manager.”

Nabil Besharat is a father of six who has worked at the plant for four years. As shift manager, Besharat is in charge of about 25 people, including Jews and Arabs.

Nabil says he came to the company “for good opportunities, for a good job, for good money,” and he found those things here.

“We work here with Jews, with Christians, with Muslims — all — with Druze,” Nabil told CBN News. They don’t even mention the word conflict, he added.

Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where people of all faiths are welcome to worship according to their own tradition. It is wonderful to see that they are also willing to encourage Arabs and Jews to work together to manufacture a great product and to build bridges between the two cultures.

Jimmy Carter has called for the recognition of Hamas’ “legitimacy as a political actor” because they represent a substantial portion of the Palestinian people. He made no suggestion that they lay down their weapons first. So what in the world is this about? Alan Dershowitz has the answer.

Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School — Rachael Lea Fish — showed me the facts They were staggering. I was amazed that in the 21st century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up – a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son – hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard’s decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter’s personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.

Jimmy Carter has been making anti-Semitic statements for years. That is very unfortunate. He was admittedly a horrible president, but most people felt that he was an honorable man. It is sad to find out that he is not.

Today’s New York Post posted an article about the calls for a cease-fire in the Israeli–Gaza conflict. Michael Goodwin, who wrote the article, points out that even with a cease-fire, there is no way to return to the status quo. The discovery of the complex network of tunnels from Gaza for the purpose of attacking innocent Israelis and destroying Israel cannot be ignored.

“If we were to pull out of Judea and Samaria, like they tell us to,” he said in speech four days after the war began, “there’d be a possibility of thousands of tunnels” being dug to attack Israel.

Noting that the West Bank is 20 times the size of Gaza, he said his country would never “create ­another 20 Gazas.”

Veteran Israeli journalist David Horovitz, writing in the Times of Israel, said the speech “spells the end” to any notion the prime minister would ever agree to the kind of free Palestinian state that President Obama and most of Europe, along with the Palestinians, demand.

Gaza has forfeited its right to become an independent state. It has taken the money given to its leaders for infrastructure and used it for weapons.

The article concludes:

It is not lost on Israelis that the tunnels were reinforced with steel and concrete. The supposed shortage of building materials in Gaza, routinely denounced as cruel by ­Israel’s critics, did not stop Hamas from diverting tens of thousands of tons into preparation for war.

That material could have been used to build houses, hospitals or schools. The tunnels even could have served as bomb shelters to protect Gaza’s civilians from Israeli bombs.

Instead, a determination to kill Jews took precedence over every ­aspect of life in Gaza. That included Hamas leaders urging and sometimes forcing civilians to stay in the line of fire, turning them into human shields to protect rockets and ­ammunition dumps. Nothing better illustrates the Hamas culture of ­hatred and death.

And now that nihilism, endorsed by Gazans who elected Hamas as their government, has destroyed any chance of a sovereign Palestinian state in the near future.

Naturally, much of the world will use a new Israeli hard line to accuse it of genocide and apartheid, blah blah blah. But the facts are clear: Once again, the Palestinians have only themselves to blame.

When a man who was in jail for armed robbery gets out of jail, you do not hand him a gun (or the money to buy one). Gaza was given a chance to become a sovereign state. The first thing they did was destroy the greenhouses that would have allowed them to prosper. Until they can behave, they should not be allowed to have a country.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a State Department official involved in U.S.-Palestinian relations told JTA this week that U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that none of the new Palestinian Cabinet ministers have any Hamas involvement, and so continued relations would not violate U.S. law banning interactions with designated terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, Fox News reports:

Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed revenge against Hamas after three teens kidnapped June 12 in the West Bank — including one with U.S. citizenship — were found dead Monday, just north of Hebron.

“They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by animals,” Haaretz quoted Netanyahu saying at a hastily arranged security cabinet meeting. “In the name of the whole of Israel, I ask to tell the dear families – to the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers and the grandfathers, the brothers and sisters – our hearts are bleeding, the whole nation is crying with them.”

The leader’s angry words came hours after the search for Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, also 16, who were snatched while hitchhiking, ended in the West Bank, where Hamas operates. Sources said the bodies were found in a shallow grave in an open field in the West Bank village of Halhul, just north of Hebron.

Why are we sending money to a government that includes a terrorist organization that routinely kills innocent civilians, including Americans?

On Wednesday Breitbart.com reported that actress Scarlett Johansson has resigned her role as “ambassador” for Oxfam International after the global charity criticized her for appearing in a Sodastream commercial that was prepared for the Super Bowl. Sodastream has a factory in Ma’ale Adumim, an eastern suburb of Jerusalem (the area referred to as the West Bank). The entire concept of the West Bank as Arab territorial is not historical (see rightwinggranny.com), but that discussion can continue at some point in the future.

It gets more interesting. Breitbart reports:

Though it is widely understood that Ma’ale Adumim and its roughly 40,000 residents would remain part of Israel in any likely peace agreement with the Palestinians, Palestinians have long opposed its construction and continue to demand its removal. Sodastream, like other Israeli companies, has been criticized for several years by the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Oxfam has not officially endorsed the BDS movement, but openly opposes trade with Israeli companies doing business in the West Bank.

But sometimes international organizations do not represent the view of the people they claim to represent. Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor reported:

The Jewish actress’s promotion of the company in a Superbowl ad has propelled an international campaign to boycott the home sodamaker and today forced the actress to step down as a global ambassador for the humanitarian agency Oxfam.

But those most familiar with the factory – Palestinians who work there – largely side with Ms. Johansson.

“Before boycotting, they should think of the workers who are going to suffer,” says a young man shivering in the pre-dawn darkness in Azzariah, a West Bank town cut off from work opportunities in Jerusalem by the concrete Israeli separation wall. Previously, he earned 20 shekels ($6) a day plucking and cleaning chickens; now he makes nearly 10 times that at SodaStream, which also provides transportation, breakfast, and lunch.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a website called 14u is reporting that the Sodastream ad intended to be played during the Super Bowl has been revised and will be played during the Super Bowl. Just for the record, I own a Sodastream and love it!

Before calling for a boycott, it is a good idea to make sure you are not hurting the same people you claim to be supporting.

In 1979, under the leadership of Anwar el-Sadat, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel. In 1981, Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood, who felt that he had betrayed them by signing that treaty. In 2000, Yassar Arafat rejected a peace offer by Ehud Barak (with the encouragement of President Clinton) at Camp David that would have given the Palestinians parts of the Old City of Jerusalem and 91 percent of the West Bank. Arafat rejected that offer because he knew that if he accepted it he would be assassinated. Being the leader of a terrorist group is not unlike being a Mafia Don–it is a powerful, dangerous job with a lot of unwritten rules that must be followed very carefully.

So where are we now? Last week Breitbart.com reported that in preliminary negotiations for a peace treaty between Israel and her Palestinian neighbors, Secretary of State John Kerry has successfully negotiated the release of 82 Palestinian terrorists, all of whom have been serving life sentences since 1993. Sounds like a great step forward for peace–release people who kill people they don’t like.

The article reports:

Additionally, the Palestinian delegation in the disputed West Bank has rejected the notion that the release of terrorists is enough to get them to the negotiating table. They would like to see Israel unilaterally withdraw from its present sovereign borders and return to where the state’s territorial boundaries were before 1967.

The fact that Israel’s territorial gains post-1967 ultimately came from defending its nation from its genocidal neighbors seems to have, time and time again with both the Obama Administration and the Palestinian leadership, fallen upon deaf ears.

Peace in the Middle East is a wonderful idea. Peace everywhere is a wonderful idea, but at some point you have to face reality. The fact that Israel exists is a fantastic recruiting tool for every Arab extremist on the planet. Peace is NOT a goal of Islam–a world-wide caliphate is.

[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad: “Allah is the all-powerful, but most people are not aware.” From time to time a clamoring is voiced, to hold an International Conference in search for a solution to the problem. Some accept the idea, others reject it, for one reason or another, demanding the implementation of this or that condition, as a prerequisite for agreeing to convene the Conference or for participating in it. But the Islamic Resistance Movement, which is aware of the [prospective] parties to this conference, and of their past and present positions towards the problems of the Muslims, does not believe that those conferences are capable of responding to demands, or of restoring rights or doing justice to the oppressed. Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the nonbelievers as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. Since when did the Unbelievers do justice to the Believers? “And the Jews will not be pleased with thee, nor will the Christians, till thou follow their creed. Say: Lo! the guidance of Allah [himself] is the Guidance. And if you should follow their desires after the knowledge which has come unto thee, then you would have from Allah no protecting friend nor helper.” Sura 2 (the Cow), verse 120 There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility. The Palestinian people are too noble to have their future, their right and their destiny submitted to a vain game. As the hadith has it: “The people of Syria are Allah’s whip on this land; He takes revenge by their intermediary from whoever he wished among his worshipers. The Hypocrites among them are forbidden from vanquishing the true believers, and they will die in anxiety and sorrow.” (Told by Tabarani, who is traceable in ascending order of traditionaries to Muhammad, and by Ahmed whose chain of transmission is incomplete. But it is bound to be a true hadith, for both story tellers are reliable. Allah knows best.)

The goal of the ‘peace process’ for the Palestinians is to drive Israel into the sea and destroy the country forever.

For those of us who believe in the Bible, we would do well to remember Genesis 12 :3 (Good News Translation):

3 I will bless those who bless you, But I will curse those who curse you. And through you I will bless all the nations.

America needs to be very careful about undermining the existence of Israel.

In new guidelines that were originally published on June 30 and are scheduled to go into effect on Friday, the 28 nations that make up the E.U. are no longer allowed to contribute financially to or cooperate in any way with organizations that are headquartered beyond the historic “Green Line” that divides the West Bank from the rest of Israel.

Significantly, the guidelines also define East Jerusalem as one of the illegal Israeli settlements that cannot receive future funding. East Jerusalem includes Old City landmarks like the Temple Mount and the Western Wall that are central to thousands of years of Jewish faith and history, making Israeli agreement with the ruling very unlikely.

It’s amazing sometimes how some organizations rewrite history. In April 2011, the American Thinker posted an article stating:

…Except that there was no “border” on Israel’s eastern flank from 1948 until 1967 — only a 1949 armistice line that marked the farthest westward military penetration by Jordan during Israel’s War of Independence when half a dozen Arab armies unsuccessfully tried to exterminate the nascent Jewish state.

The 1949 armistice line was never recognized internationally as a “border.” Neither of course were Jordan’s aggression and illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since they occurred in flagrant violation of the 1947 UN partition plan to divide British Mandate Palestine between a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Israel needs defensible borders. Israel lives in a tough neighborhood where its neighbors won’t even admit that it has a right to exist there. The European Union is definitely coming down on the wrong side of history.

President Obama is scheduled to visit Israel this month. Those of us who support Israel and her right to exist had hoped that the President would bring an olive branch to make peace after his anti-Israel actions and cabinet appointments. Unfortunately, those hopes have no relationship to reality.

According to the report, Obama, who is scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to present him with a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan during his visit to Israel. The sources said the Israeli plan “would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.”

“Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

Bad things happen to America when we pressure Israel to do things against their national interest. Giving up Judea and Samaria is definitely not in Israel’s best interest. This is Biblical land that is sacred to the Jews (and to Christians). Based on the state that now exists in Gaza, Israel should not give up any land until the Palestinians prove that they can establish a state that is not a threat to the existence of Israel and that they are willing to provide the infrastructure a state needs. Giving more land to the Palestinians in their present form would be like giving a fourteen-year-old boy a driver’s license and a Lamborghini–it might be fun for the first thirty seconds, but it would go downhill quickly.

It was kept under surveillance and followed by Israeli air force jets before it was shot down above a forest in an unpopulated area near the border with the occupied West Bank.

It was reported that the drone was not carrying any explosives. Security sources have stated that it is unlikely that the drone came from the Gaza Strip. Defense officials were also not confirming a statement made by Israeli parliament member Miri Regev, a former chief spokesman of the military, that the drone was an “Iranian drone launched by Hezbollah.”

The story blamed Israeli security policies for the fact that Christians are leaving the traditionally Christian areas such as Nazareth and Bethlehem.

CBN News painted a much more accurate picture of what is really happening in a story posted in December:

Unpredictable — that’s how Israeli author and human rights lawyer Justus Weiner describes the plight of Christians in Bethlehem and the West Bank.

For years they’ve suffered from human rights violations such as land theft, beatings, and even forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men.

The worst persecution has come against converts to Christianity.

“If they were born Muslim but they decided to find Jesus, this is like being a traitor to God,” Weiner told CBN News. “There’s very substantial chance they’ll be beaten, forced to leave the country, or killed.”

Somehow those facts were overlooked in the CBS News report.

The Washington Free Beacon points out:

Experts on the region noted that Palestinian Christians live in fear of their Muslim neighbors, who routinely intimidate them and sometimes carry out violent attacks. For this reason, it is incredibly dangerous to criticize the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which control the areas they live in.

“As a persecuted minority, if [Christians] shift the blame to Israel, they take the heat off of themselves,” said Jordanna McMillan, director of outreach for the International Israel Allies Caucus Foundation, a group that unites pro-Israel advocates across the religious spectrum. “‘60 Minutes’ doesn’t understand the intricacies of the issue.”

We have seen the way that Muslims treat Christians when they take over a country, e.g. the Coptic Christians in Egypt are fleeing the country because they fear for their safety. Why wasn’t CBS News able to look at the entire picture of the Middle East to see what was happening in Israel? Israel is the only country in the Middle East that allows true freedom of religion. Even some of the countries that we regard as free or as friendly to America will not allow tourists with Israeli passports or Israeli visa stamps to visit their countries.

I don’t know if the report on 60 Minutes was simple ignorance or Anti-Semitism, but either way, there should be a more balanced report aired to counter what has already been reported. Again, the Internet proved its value in exposing erroneous reporting.

Nicky Larkin, an Irish artist, posted an article in The Independent on Sunday. Nicky is a young man in his late twenties who believed the politically-correct line he was fed about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine, and headed off to show the world how badly behaved Israel was.

Well, it didn’t turn out quite that way. He made the film ‘Forty Shades of Grey’ after spending seven weeks dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank.

He reports on the outcome of his efforts:

The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.

An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it’s not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.

But hating Israel is not part of my personal national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican, or a Palestinian.

Every now and then you have to sit down and compare what you have been told with what you see before your eyes. I can relate–I used to be a liberal Democrat–I voted for George McGovern! Kudos to this young man for being willing to investigate and draw his own conclusions.

I expect that sometime in the next few days, the United Nations will vote on whether or not to recognize a Palestinian State. There has never been a state of Palestine, although Jordan was originally established as a home for Palestinians, but the United Nations will be voting on one shortly. What would that state look like?

Answering a question about the legal status of a Jewish minority in the future state, Areikat apprently rejected the issue, saying: “I believe, I still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated,” adding “I think we can contemplate these issues in the future.”

“After the experience of the last 44 years, of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interest that the two peoples should be separated,” Areikat added.

Habbash’s comments come after the ambassador for the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, Maen Areikat, said when asked Tuesday whether he could foresee a Jew being elected mayor of Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank: “I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future.”

Areikat, speaking at a breakfast for reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, continued: “After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated first.”

These statements have been walked back slightly, but I believe the original statements are probably the truth. I would like to remind anyone too young to remember that prior to 1967, when the Arabs controlled the Old City of Jerusalem that Christians and Jews did not have access to their holy sites. In recent years, the Jews have controlled the Old City, and the area is open to people of all faiths. It seems to me that history tells us what a Palestinian state would be like.

There seems to be an effort on the part of some Palestinians to claim that Palestine would be a peaceful, equal-opportunity state. USA Today reports:

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have called for a secular, pluralistic Palestinian state, says Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine, which advocates a non-militarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The article in USA Today further reports:

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said he read Areikat’s comments to mean a ban on Jews.

“That’s the state that the Palestinians want to declare unilaterally, without negotiations, and have recognized by the U.N.,” Oren said

I think I agree with Michael Oren. I have a hard time believing that the large number of weapons currently being smuggled into the West Bank are for peaceful purposes.